Fill out a PDF form online

Many PDFs you need to complete, such as job applications, school forms, insurance claims, HR paperwork and many government forms, are fillable forms with built-in fields. This tool shows those fields in place on the page, so you see exactly where each answer goes.

Character limits set by the form are respected, and comb fields (a row of boxes, one character each, common for ZIP codes and ID numbers) put each character in its own box. Prefer a simple list? List view shows every field one under another, which can be easier on a phone or for very long forms. Values already in the form are kept, so you can finish a partly completed form.

Some PDFs only look like forms: the lines and boxes are printed on, or the whole thing is a scan. When the tool finds no fields, it says so and offers a button that opens the Fill & Sign editor. There you can type text anywhere on the page and add checkmarks, dates and your signature.

Some forms are built with Adobe's XFA technology. Many of these carry two layers: a dynamic XFA part and a standard set of fields that any PDF reader understands. In that case the tool fills the standard fields and removes the XFA layer when saving, so every reader shows your answers.

Some forms are built only in XFA, including certain government forms, and have no standard fields at all. Those can't be filled here. If a form comes with its own official filing software or website, use that instead.

Turn on Flatten before downloading to merge your answers into the page. The values become part of the document, and the fields can no longer be edited. This is useful when you send a completed form and don't want it changed, or when the recipient's app shows interactive fields as empty.

Keep an unflattened copy if you may need to edit your answers later. You can also flatten afterward with Flatten PDF.

Your child's school sends a fillable emergency contact form. Drop it here and the fields appear on the page: Student name, Grade, Parent phone, a Medical consent checkbox. Type the answers, tick the consent box and pick the grade from its dropdown. Leave Flatten off if you might need to update a phone number later, or turn it on if you are emailing the form back to the school office. Download it, open it to check every answer, then sign it with Sign PDF if a parent signature is required.

• Special characters: answers are rendered with an embedded font that supports accented letters.
• Dates: follow the format the form asks for, usually MM/DD/YYYY on US forms.
• Calculated fields (totals computed by the form's scripts) are not recalculated; type the value yourself if needed.
• Signed forms: filling a form that already carries a digital signature changes the file and can invalidate that signature.

Forms often hold your most sensitive details: Social Security number, date of birth, income, health information. The form is filled in your browser, and the PDF is never uploaded.